Nature Of The Beast
by Unoriginality
Summary: BBI, Pride-ending; Envy realizes that Pride has it the worst of all of them.


"Those who get too close to the Stone die."

Out of the corner of his eye, Envy watched Pride's lips as they moved, a bare ghost of movement, almost perfectly still and oh god, they looked so deliciously fuckable...

Envy shook that thought away and smirked, returning his gaze to the village spread out below them. "One way or another," he agreed, tossing the length of his hair over his shoulder.

Pride turned his head to him and focused his dead golden eyes on him. "But these are not sacrifices?"

Inwardly, Envy sighed. "Didn't you listen to Father?"

"I'm sorry, Brother."

Envy's eyebrow twitched slightly as it always did when Pride called him that. "They're close, but they aren't good enough to get closer and be of use."

Pride looked back down at the town, expression as thoughtful as his impassive face ever was, and Envy had to again push away the idea of kissing the younger sin until he begged for breath and then forcing him down on his knees...

God.

"If they are useless, then we must remove them," the blond homunculus stated finally.

A grin pulled Envy's lips back over his teeth fangily. "Exactly."

Work before pleasure. Not that work wasn't a pleasure of a different sort.

Pride rubbed his hand over the red markings on his right arm, as if there were something wriggling and alive just below the skin, then dug his fingers in, a bit of blood trailing lightly down his forearm. Pride frowned, then tugged, a flash of alchemical energy sweeping along the tattoos as he pulled back a weapon, a giant deadly scythe that looked to belong to a god of death.

Fitting.

It was a routine job. Pride would descend like some parody of the angel of death, and Envy would follow behind, often in the form of a dragon to give it an additional touch of divine retribution. They'd leave behind ruins, and the rumors would perpetuate; that those who came too close to the Philosopher's Stone would die, with a supernatural twist that would not deter someone later who might be good enough to succeed.

Envy landed and shifted back to his own form, standing back to let Pride finish the job. Pride was the perfect killer, cold and emotionless, and brutally effective, and it was beautiful to see, to watch.

Somewhere to their right, there was a loud crash as part of a building crumbled and fell, and a loud shriek mingled with the sound. Pride didn't react.

"Brother!"

Envy tensed and watched Pride carefully as the sin paused and looked over.

Pride was the only homunculus that had ever been human, created from the body of Father's flesh and blood son. Nothing had remained of Edward Elric's memories in the newborn sin. A scant few emotional triggers lingered beneath the surface of his unbeating heart, but there were no names, no faces, no memories to give them reason or logic.

Pride approached the boy that had screamed, a little boy desperately clutching the childish hand that barely stuck out from under the rubble of the building that had just collapsed.

And Envy watched silently as Pride changed. His face twisted bitterly, expression curdled and corroded into something that was at once terrified and terrifying.

A human.

Fear, anger, hurt, pain, hatred, rage, confusion, everything wholly animalistic and dark and monstrous about human nature danced across his face as he raised his scythe.

Envy had never understood this about humans, never understood why God punished not the Sin, but the human Sinner.

Humans were the darkest of the monsters, able to run headlong into the abyss so far that even the soulless homunculii were left behind. They encompassed the best and the worst of the universe, a blasphemous paradox, tainting the very ideals of love, sacrifice and compassion that they revered with the depths of the darkness they could descend to.

Envy made his way to a safe distance to watch as the human exhausted itself from Pride, leaving nothing identifiable as... as anything, really, behind him.

If anyone were to manage to preserve the image of the destruction left behind, preserve it for all generations to see, nobody would ever seek the Stone again. For any reason.

He didn't try to approach Pride until the sin had fallen to his knees, too exhausted to do anything more than pound his fist against the ground and scream wordlessly. Silently, he knelt in front of him and put a hand under his chin, lifting his face to him and easily catching the fist that snapped up at him. In a rare display of tenderness that was only ever reserved for the younger homunculus, Envy leaned in and brushed his lips against Pride's lower lip.

Pride stopped screaming abruptly and his eyes flew open, the last dying fires of life in his eyes extinguishing themselves as he registered Envy's presence, the dull and soulless look slowly returning.

Feebly, Pride reached his arms out and wrapped them around Envy's neck as tightly as he could, shivering as he clung to the older sin and pulled himself back from the darkness of his former human soul.

None of the other homunculii had been created from a human. That burden was Pride's and Pride's alone.

Envy had never understood how fortunate for that he was.

"There," he whispered, pulling Pride to his feet as he stood, "but for the grace of God, go I."


End file.
